


Gone, But Not Forgotten

by cordeliadelayne



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Light Angst, Young Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-24 01:25:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8350855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordeliadelayne/pseuds/cordeliadelayne
Summary: Dean's bracelet holds very poignant memories.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KimberlyFDR](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KimberlyFDR/gifts).



> Written for kimberlyfdr who wanted a fic about a piece of Dean's jewellery.
> 
> Originally posted to Livejournal in 2011.

Dean's given up wondering where Sam gets to in the night. He's decided that it's a question he can do without the answer to. So the sting of it is almost unnoticeable when he wakes up after a fitful dream and finds that the bed next to his is empty.

He turned on to his back and stared up at the ceiling. It was a strange red and white tiled colour, though some of the white tiles had some very disturbing looking stains on them, which Dean was really not going to think about.

He absently twirled one of his bracelets between his fingers, pulling at it and then letting it go so that it slapped against his skin. Sometimes it itched and other times it got caught in his shirt or his jacket, or when he was trying to do something particularly tricky with a knife in order to get him or Sam out of trouble. But he'd never once thought of removing it. It stayed on regardless of whether he was having a shower or sticking his hand inside a creature's chest and when he'd returned from Hell it had been there, as if it was a part of him.

Which he supposed it was.

He didn't own much. There weren't many things that went through his life with him from when he was a child to now, when he was attempting to live a grown-up life. Whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.

But this bracelet was one of the constants.

He smiled as he remembered the girl who had given it to him. She hadn't even been a girlfriend. Just a friend. And they were few and far between even when he bothered to go to school. Especially then.

She'd lived in the house next door, back when his father was renting them decent houses and not shoving them in dirty motels. It was a time when everything was still raw, his mother's death still so fresh and bright in his mind.

And Jane had been there. A bright spark of nine years old, with long black hair and gangly knees, she'd plonked herself on the steps next to Dean when he'd run out of the house to avoid his own thoughts.

“What's up?” she'd asked when Dean had stared at her, open-mouthed. In those days he wasn't quite as quick with a “get lost” when other kids were involved as he grew to be. And he hadn't really wanted to be on his own, even if his only option was to hang out with a girl. (That was something else that had changed pretty soon after that).

“Nothing,” Dean had replied, morosely kicking his sneakers against the ground.

“Doesn't look like nothing. I'm Jane. You new in town? I can take you around if you like? There's not much to do, but the ice cream place is pretty good and if the owner's son is in he lets you go back for seconds without having to pay.”

Dean had stared at the girl and waited for her to take a breath, before nodding and following her. Though he absolutely refused to take the hand she offered, instead putting his own in his pockets.

* * * * *

It had been over a ridiculously good ice cream sundae that Dean had found out everything about Jane's life. And he meant that literally. Jane had seemed to be suffering from a severe case of verbal diarrhoea and everything that sprung to mind she spurted out – her school work, her dad's new job, her mom's latest cooking disaster, the boys she liked, the girls she didn't – Dean had never seen anyone talk so much about so little. But at the same time he found it soothing, and let the sounds of her rattling on just pass over him.

“We should be friends,” she'd said and Dean had turned to her and really looked at her for the first time. She had a dob of cream on the tip of her nose and her hands were dirty, like she'd been plunging them in the ground that morning and hadn't bothered to wash. And for all her talk of her parents, Dean couldn't help but think she'd brought herself up as much as anything.

“Sure,” he'd said, quickly, so as not to talk himself out of it. “Okay.” It wouldn't hurt to have someone to hang around with, even if they were a girl. And it wasn't as if they were staying. Dean had known, even then, that that wasn't the sort of life the Winchesters were ever going to lead again.

“Great!” Jane had laughed. Then she'd pulled apart the necklace she was wearing – though necklace was stretching it. It really seemed like a piece of thread with all manner of bits and pieces attached to it – old bottle tops and candy wrappers and shiny pebbles and other linked bits of thread – it positively screamed home made. But she'd pulled at it with her teeth and removed one of the looped bits of thread, then tied it into a bracelet that she then put around Dean's arm before he could tell her that he wasn't interested.

He'd just looked down at it, surprised, and then gone to the movies with her and ended up getting yelled at by his dad for being late. But it had been worth it.

* * * * *

Dean pulled at the bracelet again, memories pressing against his skull.

Jane had been killed by a ghost six months later, and they moved on two days after that. He'd made a promise to her though, as he'd passed the house in their hurried way on to the next town that needed them, that he'd never take it off.

It was one of the few promises he'd ever made that he was sure he'd be able to keep.


End file.
